


Former Heroes Who Quit Too Late

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Lance Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 12:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3068330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whenever asked how they all came to be a team, she instantly claims that she has no clue how they got stuck with Hunter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Former Heroes Who Quit Too Late

**Author's Note:**

> for team merc day of lance hunter week.

Whenever asked how they all came to be a team, she instantly claims that she has no clue how they got stuck with Hunter.  

It’s a lie.

Isabelle remembers very clearly the day one of her SHIELD contacts sent him her way.

She would have liked to be able to say that it was because he saved the day, or was useful for something more than dry humor and obsolete trivia.

(He was a bit more useful than that, not that she would ever let him here those words come out of her mouth.)

Instead the one thing she remembers is when the mission was over, and they were all crowded around a bar for celebratory drinks, he turned to her with a wide grin, clapped her on the shoulder and said, “You know, I’ve decided I’ll keep you around,” like he somehow had some decision in that matter.

(He didn’t, and it would take Isabelle four more time of meeting him on some job before she agreed to let him stick around.)

“I’m old enough to be your mother, you know,” Isabelle had replied, “if I wasn’t a lesbian.”

She recounts that story years later in a best man speech, before glossing over the other parts of the evening, and finishing with that time her threw up in this old woman’s recycling bin and woke everybody in the neighborhood up while said old woman beat him with a frying pan.

\---

“You need a nickname.”

“No, I don’t,” she cuts him , “I like my name just the way it is.”

“I’m going to give you a nickname.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

Hunter completely ignores her, as expected and says, “you don’t look much like a Belle.”

“Good.”

“What about Isa,” he tries, the name out, “is that even a name? Isa?”

“No, it’s not,” she gives a long suffering sigh.

(Those are becoming a norm since he started hanging around.)

He’s still got his concentrating face on when she looks over, and she feels the need to remind him that they’re on a job not a social call, but figures it’s not worth the fight.

Thankfully before he can say anything else, somebody starts shooting something and she’s pretty sure that the whole conversation has been dropped.

That is until they end up at some bar again and he turns to the bartender with this shit eating grin and says, “a beer for me, and something fruit for Izzy.”

And she’s so quick to correct her drink order (“a shot of whiskey”) that she lets the nickname slip right under the radar.

It takes less than a month before everybody she knows starts calling her Izzy.

\---

He’s not necessarily _new_ to this business.

He’d done similar things before (drug runs mostly), but when somebody suggested her could get paid a little bit more to do work that was a little bit more legal (depending on the country) he had jumped on the opportunity.

Of course, he had also constructed some preconceived notions about this whole mercenary business before getting into it, and one of the other two people on this job seemed to have made it their life’s goal to break down all of his notions.

In the middle of a fire fight, no less.

“Are you a car person or a dog person?”

“Uh, cats,” he replies, hoping at is the right answer, as he fires a shot off over their blockade.

He’s pretty sure from the shouts on the other end that he’s hit something.

“What about movies? Or tv programs?”

“I’m sorry how is any of this relevant to anything.”

“It’s not,” the other person on the job says, she seems to be the more practical one of the two, “but if you don’t let him ask them all, he’ll just whine.”

“I do not _whine_.”

“You’re whining right now,” she just replies, before pushing away from the blockade and making a run for their getaway car.

He’s about ready to do the same thing, though stops a second later when the other guy asks something. He doesn’t hear exactly what he says, catches a “hey mate” and a “I meant to ask” and he thinks he here’s something like “where you from” but it might have been “what’re you called”.

That’s probably why by the time they’re all safely in their getaway car he ends up blurting out an answer of“Idaho.”

There’s the first moment of silence he’s had since he was introduced to these two, before the guy blurts out, “what stupid fucking parents name their kid _Idaho_.”

“That’s not what I-“

“Hunter, be nice,” she cuts in, “most people go by last names in this business.”

“You’re named after the potato state!”

“I thought I told you to be nice.”

At some point he does try to interrupt them and mention how he thought Hunter was asking where he was from, not his name, but either they don’t hear him or don’t care, because from then on out he’s known as Idaho.

\---

“We’re adopting you, just accept it.”

“I’m ninety percent sure I’m older than you, if the age on your fake ID is anything to go by.”

“Doesn’t matter, you came in here last, so that makes you the baby brother,” Hunter just insists, slinging an arm over his shoulder to pull him close, “Izzy’s mom, by the way.”

“No, I’m not,” she interjects from two bar stools over, where he could have sworn she had been busy flirting with some woman and not actually listening to their conversation.

“She is,” Hunter just insists, “actually, there’s a story about that. See when I first met Izzy-“

\---

“Why aren’t you wearing pants?”

“You know, it’s actually a long story-“

“Not that long. It was pretty short actually, and a bit unsatisfying really,” comes an unfamiliar woman’s voice, and immediately Idaho looks towards the stairs, to find the aforementioned woman staring back at him.

“I thought last night we agreed nobody was bringing dates back to the safe house?”

(Not that he had a date or anything lined up, but he probably could have found somebody in that bar. Really Izzy had been the one to find issue with that rule, but she was standing over by the coffee pot not saying anything about their current situation, so he wasn’t sure what was up with that.)

“I completely blew your mind, Bob, don’t deny it.”

“Definitely denying it,” the woman – (Bob?) says, before offering a, “good morning, Izzy.”

“Did you have a job for us, or did you just come here for the mediocre sex?”

“Hey!”

“I _might_ have something.”

\---

Bobbi Morse isn’t part of their team.

She’s got SHIELD contacts and other commitments, and a laundry list of secrets that she keeps hidden in words she won’t speak, but she’s around enough that they all end up getting to know her (and see more of her) than they probably would ever need to.

Izzy has offered to give Bobbi the night of her life if she ever decides to switch teams at least three times.

And Idaho has quested her more than one how such an intelligent woman could stand to spend time around Hunter without literally feeling their IQ drop.

Neither of them were particularly surprised when over drinks one evening Hunter insists that he’s going to marry that woman one day.

Really they’re just surprised Bobbi eventually ends up saying yes.

\---

She doesn’t keep too many personal items, in her line of work it really just doesn’t make sense.

There’s the picture of her and Jane.

(“She’s my sister, not by girlfriend.”

“Does that mean she’s single?”

“Aren’t you getting married?”

“A guy can have backup plans, right?”)

Her mother’s necklace.

(“I never pegged you for the jewelry type.”

“I’m not.”)

And a chipped coffee mug which says _world’s best mum_ on it.

She’s pretty sure gag gifts weren’t supposed to hold this much sentimental value, but she’s that she nearly died, at least twice, after having to go back and get that mug from whatever hotel she left it in.

So there’s that.

\---

They’re in Idaho, of all places, for some stupid job that ends with a bullet far too close for comfort, which is probably why he suggests it.

He knows it’s a bad idea the second the words are out of his lips, but he also knows that it’s too late to reasonably take it back, especially when they could all use a place to sleep without having to keep one eye open and a home cooked meal.

“Remember my parent’s think I’m a travel agent,” he tells them, “so whatever you don’t mentioned nearly dying, or shooting people, or anything- don’t mention anything.”

He doesn’t expect them to follow that rule so well, but by the time they’ve all fallen into the beds of his parent’s guest rooms, he has to admit that this wasn’t so bad.

After all, they only slipped up and called him _Idaho_ in front of his parents two times.

“I seriously don’t even remember what your real name is!”

\---

“Hey, Izzy-“

“No.”

“I haven’t even asked my question yet!”

“The answer is still no,” Izzy says, “and you know how I know this?”

“Because you’re the rudest person I-“

“Because Hunter always asked the stupidest shit in the middle of fire fights,” Idaho cuts him off.

“Exactly!”

“I do not,” he insists, “all of my mid-fight thoughts are highly relevant.”

“Did you even realize that dreaming is just like lying down to hallucinate,” Izzy says in a very well executed British accent, that’s clearly supposed to be him.

Idaho follows in suit a second later with, “isn’t it weird that nothing rhymes with orange or purple?”

“If you take a turtle’s shell off they’ll die.”

“Those plastic things at the end of your shoelaces are called aglets.”

“It’s illegal to hunt camels in Arizona.”

“You can see the Great Wall of China from space.”

“Okay, fine, fine,” he says, hitting one of the goons that they’ve been fighting with a bit more force than necessary, “you’ve made your point, but trust me, this one’s different”

“I can keep going on if you need me to prove my point again,” she offers, with a smug little grin.

“No, what I need you to do is be the best man at my wedding!”

\---

“I feel like I should be mildly offended that you didn’t choose me to be your best man, seeing as I am a _man._ ”

“It’s because I didn’t want you blasting Taylor Swift at my bachelor party,” Hunter teases, “also Izzy knows all the best strippers.”

“That I do!”

\---

“I bet you ten thousand that this mission’s a set up.”

“Izzy, you and I both know I am far too poor to take that bet,” Hunter says.

Which she does know, because he’s been blowing all of his paycheck on expensive gifts for his fiancé and wedding plans for what really just ought to be the two of them eloping to Vegas.

(She would have eloped to Vegas if he was her wedding, but then again Izzy never intended on doing the whole marriage nonsense.)

“Doesn’t mean you don’t want to take that bet.”

“Of course, I want to take it,” he groans.

If there’s one thing she knows about him (and she knows a lot at this point) it’s that there’s no way he can back down from a bet or a challenge.

“How about this,” he says a moment later, “if I’m right I still get that ten thousand.”

“And if I’m right,” Izzy asks.

“I’ll name my first kid after you.”

She pauses, as though she’s honestly considering it for a moment, because really they both know that Bobbi will never go for that.

(She’ll probably pay his debt to settle the score later though.)

Before Izzy asks, “even if it’s a guy.”

“You’d doom my future son to being named _Isabelle.”_

“Take it or leave it, Hunter.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll take the bet.”

She ends up being right, as expected.

And even though she never gets a chance to meet the kid, many year’s down the road there will be a girl who stands in front of her first grade classroom on show and tell day explaining how her father lost the right to name her in a bet to a mercenary.

(Though she’ll never figure out how she ended up with the potato state for her middle name.)

\---

“I think I’m dying,” he says, like the mellow dramatic fool he is.

No sane person would be trying to force a conversation out through a nearly ruptured lung, but they had all long since learned that Lance Hunter was not exactly a _sane_ person.

“You’re not dying,” Izzy says, sharply and to the point, her fingers which are pressed against his chest holding something in curl just a bit at the beginnings of his protest.

“You’re not allowed to die,” Idaho jumps in a second later, “you’ve spent all that money on your stupid wedding, can’t die before that.”

“I still have to embarrass you with my best man speech.”

That gets a sort of chocked laugh out of him, and it’s a horrible sound, but there’s an ambulance on the way and nothing more they can do at this point.

“But if I do die-“

“You won’t,” she cuts him off again, “you’ll make it through this to outlive both of us.

“I doubt that.”

“The grouchy ones usually live the longest.”

“I’m not grouchy, you’re _grouchy_.”

\---

“I’ve been told that I’m to make some sort of speech, best man duties and all, and I’m sure you’re all wondering how a normal respectable-“

“ _Respectable_ , my ass.”

“-person like me, has managed to become friends with this idiot. Well, it’s a long story, but I’ll skip around to the good parts for you.”

 


End file.
